Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats, and Drugs Hardcover – Illustrated, January 24, 2017

I had fairly high expectations for this book. I hoped it would be, at least in part, the book that has yet to be written about the way that addiction shaped the development of jazz. I should have known better than to have wasted my time with it when I looked through the index and found no entry for Art Pepper. Pepper's autobiography "Straight Life" is listed in the bibliography, but I doubt that Torgoff ever read the most revealing book about the impact of heroin addiction on jazz. The book veers back and forth between the beat poets and jazz musicians, and ultimately says very little about the music. Also, it focuses on only a handful of musicians, and doesn't even reach the subject of how narcotics influenced who played with whom, and who was limited in their ability to play with other musicians by incarceration and how that influenced the way the music evolved. An illustrative example would have been the great alto saxophonist Frank Morgan, whose style was frozen by virtue of being removed from the scene by 30-some-odd years in prison, many spent in San Quentin where he would have met Art Pepper (but no mention of either man). He emerged as a paragon of a style that still had currency among jazz listeners, but could never catch up to contemporary players. One learns a lot more about how heroin affected jazz from the recent Frank Morgan documentary "Sound of Redemption" than from this book, and one would learn much, much more from "Straight Life."I also find the Torgoff's writing to be rather over-caffeinated. He greatly admires Stanley Crouch's book on Charlie Parker, which is a stylistic abomination. Torgoff's prose is not as awful as Crouch's, but I found it consistently annoying. There are also some howling mistakes, as when he refers to Faulkner's having written about a real Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, when actually Faulkner was writing about Lafayette County, which he fictionalized as Yoknapatawpha County. That failure of fact-checking made me wonder how many of the other assertions in the book were similarly wrong.

There were far too many mispronounced names to be an enjoyable listen. Beiderbecke and Bechet may not be household names ourside of jazz, but no one within the jazz world has any doubt as to the correct pronunciation. He misses on dozens of names: Amram and Lowell (MA) are a couple more that come to mind. He even spoke of a record company, using the verb form of record (accent on the second syllable).Furthermore, the book is full of quotes, and the reader puts on what he deems to be an appropriate accent for each person. This takes away from the narrative, with some of the voices being downright funny, and not reminiscent of the original speaker in any way.As for the book itself, it contains a lot of information, presented in a folksy, non academic manner.

The book starts out with some new drug war history I did not know. After a while it mostly tells the sad old stories most well informed jazz fans know about drugs, jazz musicians and the beat generation. Just too many old stories for me.

Martin Torgoff once again goes in deep about the history of drugs and the impact it has on society. The history of music is perfectly weaved into the use of drugs. I throughly enjoyed how Martin describes the music scene, I could hear the notes come off the page. A must read for any music buff or anyone that has been tempted by drugs. Read it!

Good history of those who are really hip

This book begins with the author’s own experience of drug use before looking at the influence of drugs on the evolution of jazz and the relationship between narcotics and the writers, and poets, of the Beat Generation. The book opens in the 1930’s, with the country plunged into Depression, and the birth of jazz in New Orleans. While we hear of how future screenwriter, Terry Southern, and the founder of Jazz label, Stash Records, Bernie Brightman, discovered marijuana; meanwhile, archconservative, Harry J. Anslinger, the Chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, preached the evils of the same substance and promised a moral crusade against drugs.It is clear that, in those early days, drugs were sold fairly openly. Bernie Brightman recalled smoking joints in Harlem dance halls, while there were even famous sellers, such as Mezz Mezzrow. Along with the history of drug use, there is also – of course – the history of the music. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and others. This book not only brings the place, and the era, alive, but gives us biographies of the characters and the music. We then move on to the Beat Generation, with Herbert Huncke (hustler, writer and drug addict and like most of the people that populate these pages, he just has an amazing name as a matter of course), Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.This book will appeal to music buffs, as well as those interested in history. It takes us through the professional success of many of those involved, as well as the personal cost of drug use – and cost there is. What begins optimistically and experimentally, often leads to abuse, addiction and all of the issues that go along with that. While marijuana often led to stronger drugs, such as heroin, the needle marks of addiction was often initially viewed as a declaration of being hip – of rebellion. However, they led to the pain of withdrawal, often combined with the problems of fame and alcoholism. Drug use over the years, which was initially viewed as something fashionable and, even romantic, later become viewed as a plague in the community.I found this a really fascinating read. The author does a great job of explaining why drug use was so important to this group of musicians and writers. He does not romanticise drug use, but shows the influence it had and why it was so important. I liked the style of the writing too, which combines biography, interviews, history and a good appraisal of the Beat Generation of writers and of music – Jazz, swing and bebop. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

great

One of the best books I have ever read and I’m really sad to have got to the end of it.